Portfolio construction and ongoing management, with the costs and the risk stated plainly.
Portfolios, cost, and what you are actually paying for
An investment portfolio is a set of trade-offs: between growth and the ability to sleep, between cost and complexity, between what is likely and what is merely possible. Portfolios should be built around the risk someone can genuinely carry — which is not always the risk a questionnaire says they can — and the total cost should be visible, including the layers that never appear on a provider’s headline charge.
Typical matters
Who we act for
Investors whose holdings have grown without a stated strategy, people weighing advised against do-it-yourself routes, trustees who need a defensible basis for decisions, and anyone who has never been shown the full cost of what they own.
Speak to an adviserIn more detail
Risk questionnaires are a starting point and not much more. They are usually completed in calm conditions, and they measure stated attitude rather than actual capacity. The more useful questions are structural: how long until this money is needed, what else could be drawn on if it falls, and what would you actually do if the portfolio dropped sharply in a month.
The answer to the last one matters most, because the worst outcome in investing is rarely the fall itself — it is selling at the bottom. A portfolio someone can hold through a bad year, earning slightly less, beats a theoretically optimal one they abandon.
Investment cost arrives in layers. There is the adviser charge, the platform charge, the fund’s ongoing charge, and transaction costs inside the fund that do not appear in that figure at all. Each looks small. Together they are the single most reliable predictor of what a portfolio nets over time, because they are certain while returns are not.
Everything we recommend comes with the total laid out, including the parts a provider would not normally volunteer. Where a cheaper structure would do the same job, we say so — including when that means recommending less of what we do.
Where an investment is held changes the outcome as much as what is held. Pensions, ISAs and general accounts are taxed differently, on contributions, on income and on gains, and the right order to fill them depends on circumstances and the timescale involved.
The usual principle is unglamorous: use the allowances before reaching for anything structured. A great many portfolios that look sophisticated are simply paying tax that a different wrapper would have avoided. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and the rules change, so this is a question to revisit, not settle once.
Ongoing service is where most of the lifetime cost of advice sits, so it should be clear what it buys. At minimum it means rebalancing when the portfolio drifts from its mandate, considering the tax consequences before trading rather than afterwards, and reporting honestly against an agreed benchmark — including when that comparison is unflattering.
It should not mean activity for its own sake. A portfolio that is traded frequently generates cost and tax with reliable certainty and improvement without.
Before we speak
The aim is to establish what you hold and what it is costing you. Those two facts are harder to assemble than they should be, and most people have never seen them together.
If you have none of it
People often delay a first conversation until they have assembled a file. That delay costs more than the missing paperwork does. Tell us what you know, and we will work out what needs finding — and in what order.
Speak to an adviserPlain English
The words that turn up in this area, written for people who are not lawyers — because that is who has to make the decisions.
Common questions
No, and nobody authorised to advise you will. The value of investments can fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you put in. Any firm implying otherwise is telling you something useful about itself.
Cost is the most reliable lever available, which argues for keeping it low by default. That does not make active management useless everywhere, but it does mean the burden of proof sits with the more expensive option, and it should be explained in each case rather than assumed.
Sometimes. Consolidation can cut cost and make a portfolio manageable. It can also trigger tax, lose features, or cost more than it saves. It is worth doing where the arithmetic supports it and not because it is tidier.
Annually as a rule, and when something changes at home — not when markets move. Reviewing in response to market news is how people end up trading on sentiment.
We will have discussed it before it happens, which is the point of agreeing a risk level in writing. In a fall, the plan is usually to do what was agreed: rebalance, draw from the part of the portfolio designed for it, and avoid selling the assets that are down.
No. Investments are held with regulated providers and custodians in your name. ⟦Confirm the platform and custody arrangements and state them here, including what protection applies.⟧
Important
The value of investments can fall as well as rise and you may get back less than you put in. Past performance is not a guide to future performance.
Tax treatment depends on your individual circumstances and may change in future. Statements here describe the rules as they generally apply, not advice on your position.
How it works
A call at our cost to understand what you are trying to do and tell you plainly whether we can help. Sometimes the honest answer is that you do not need advice at all, or not yet — and we would rather say that than bill you for finding out slowly.
Before any work starts you get the scope, the approach, who will do the work and what it will cost, in writing. Independence means we are paid by you rather than by a provider, and you should be able to see exactly what you are paying and for what.
A written recommendation you can read, question and keep, setting out what we suggest and why — including the options we rejected. Then a review at agreed points, testing the plan against what actually happened rather than restating it.
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